Two poker players stood in the middle of stadium court of the Darling Tennis Center in Las Vegas with their rackets of choice in hand.
On one side, Dan Smith. He has more than $40 million in lifetime tournament earnings, with a World Poker Tour title and a World Series of Poker bracelet listed among his many accomplishments. On the other, Markus Gonsalves, winner of the 2020 WPT Gardens Poker Championship.
Gonsalves had the first serve and set himself up for the shot. He tossed the ball into the air, and then brought his racket down.
PING.
The sound ringing out around the court was unusual and metallic. But to be fair, Gonsalves’ equipment wasn’t a tennis racket in the traditional sense. It was a T-fal Simply Cook non-stick frying pan, recently purchased from a local Target store, which was set to serve as Gonsalves’ racket for the one-set match against Smith to try to even up their chances. The only way it resembled a tennis racket was the pink grip tape wrapped around the handle.
A small crowd of friends, including poker player David Peters, gathered to watch the prop bet play out. As a light rain and wind blew through the court, the match began.
Gonsalves held his serve using the frying pan, but Smith held on his serve as well. With the score tied 1-1, Gonsalves and Smith got into three long volleys. Smith eventually broke Gonsalves’ serve and went up 2-1. Then Smith got up 40-0 on his own serve, and Gonsalves uttered, “Uh oh” aloud.
Something clicked at that point, and Gonsalves controlled the action from there on out. He fought his way back to deuce, and then salvaged the game. He wouldn’t lose another game in their match.
Flipping the pan over to the inside each time he switched hands, Gonsalves rattled off five straight games to claim victory. He commented on the heavy nature of the pan, especially six or seven games in, but it did not keep him from successfully returning almost every shot Smith sent over the net.
This wasn’t the first time these two had played tennis with Gonsalves at a disadvantage. In the Bahamas, the pair squared off with Gonsalves using his non-dominant left hand on the way to victory.
So where did the frying pan idea come from?
“I actually played a friend [with a frying pan] like two years ago who is at a pretty similar level to Dan,” said Gonsalves. “We made this [match] about a month ago and I didn’t practice, and he was sneakily practicing. He got a lot better. He played way better than I thought he would.”
Another question is how Gonsalves knew to only use the inside part of the pan, and how to prepare.
“I just practiced testing it out,” said Gonsalves. “The first time I did it, I got like five different pans, tested them all and this was the best one.”
In a moment of time in which poker players seem to be at each other’s throats, angling for high-stakes grudge matches at the table, this tennis prop bat harkened back to a different era – a time when poker players tried to find a creative angle in a friendly setting. And perhaps that can be a lesson moving forward.